Category Archives: Flowers

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Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.” ~A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Even as we celebrated the American holiday of Thanksgiving this week, I am mindful that gratitude is seasonless and ever appropriate regardless of temporal circumstances. I have taken a long hiatus from this blog as I dove deep underground for reflection and renewal these past few months. Surfacing into a heavy teaching schedule this fall only complicated matters, yet each day brings something for which I am grateful.

“I have been finding treasures in places I did not want to search. I have been hearing wisdom from tongues I did not want to listen. I have been finding beauty where I did not want to look. And I have learned so much from journeys I did not want to take.” ~Suzy Kassem

There were many moments of beauty in the garden during those months. Flowers bloomed, butterflies graced the garden, and the rain came often to soak the ground and encourage growth and flowering. (click on any photo in the mosaic to see a full size image)

Raindrops on smoke bush leaves

Yellow swallowtail butterfly

Turkey mom and babies

Lower garden in September

Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’

Zinnias and Rudbeckia

Two weeks ago, the autumnal light slanted through the woods while the mild fall weather had barely turned the leaves into shades of red and gold.

Arch and maple ‘Bloodgood’

Golden woods

Herb circle in late autumn bloom

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf. ~Albert Schweitzer

Last week, a freezing rain followed by snow turned the woods into a fairy land but bent to the ground many trees that had not yet dropped their leaves.

Angel surveys the snow

The lower garden fairyland

Oak leaves coated with ice and snow

Cornus kousa splayed open

Cornus mas bowed to the ground

Bare branches etched with snow

Grateful that our electric power stayed on, several friends were not so lucky and dealt with many cold days and dark nights. Alas, our white pines suffered damage from the heavy load and lost several branches, crushing a chair beneath them. Fortunately the Chinese dogwoods (Cornus kousa) and Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) trees sprung back up after being bowed to the ground. Resilience in nature is not to be underestimated!

Today’s frigid temperatures revealed roses frozen in mid-bloom and a bounty of rose hips from previous blooms that will feed birds throughout the winter.

Even as people in many parts of our country and our world are in distress, I am aware of my blessings as I write this from the warmth of my home, my sweet Angel curled next to me, my husband serenading us on his guitar. How fortunate I am to have a home, a loving family, a beautiful garden, and meaningful work. Marcel Proust reminds us “let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”

May your soul blossom now and through the coming days and please, send a word of thanks to those who have given so much, regardless of circumstances. Heroes walk among us, every day people who give their time, their hearts and sometimes their lives.

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light. ~Albert Schweitzer

That beautiful season the Summer!
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light;
And the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is the middle of the calendar year, that fulcrum on which the earth spins and twists into the depths of summer. This Fourth of July morning, the garden was at the height of bloom, sparking with floral fireworks.

The hydrangeas have grown twice their normal size from the many days of rain in June and sweep the ground with their massive white blossoms against the deep green of the woods. (click on any image in the mosaics to see a full size photo)

Hydrangea arborescens ‘Anabelle’

Pulmonaria and hydrangea

Oak leaf hydrangea

The daylilies have stepped forward into the spotlight and are singing intricate songs of color and shape. Some appear gentle, fragile, tender in tints of pink and violet.

Daylily ‘Blue Eyed Butterfly’

Daylily ‘Janice Brown’

Daylily ‘Pink Windmill’

Campanula (bellflower)

Daylily ‘Ultimate Dawning’

Daylily ‘Siloam Dan Tau’

Achillea ‘Little Susie’

Daylily ‘Mimosa Umbrella’

Others are bold and daring, as if they’ve thrown their heads back for a hearty laugh.

True lilies are blooming too – Orienpet lily ‘Altari’ is so fragrant that her scent carries over the entire garden in the heat of a July morning.

The smaller Asiatic lilies are almost done blooming for the season.

Asiatic Lily ‘Landini’

Asiatic Lily ‘Tiger Babies’

Asiatic Lily ‘Matrix’ & Coleus ‘Sedona’

The woods have grown dark with summer leaves, promising a cool respite from the summer heat.

The trees have it in their pent up buds,
to darken nature and be summer woods. ~Robert Frost

Coming and going through the garden gate, the sheer bounty of color and life makes me pause for a longer look.

Through the gate

Down the steps

My eyes, weary of staring at luminous screens indoors for days on end, find relief and delight in the complex layers of shadow and light before me. I look across the garden at scenes of color and texture

Up the steps

Hilltop

Lilies and Coleus ‘Sedona’

Deck border

Detail on steps

Pink daylillies

Peach and gold daylilies

and look down to the tiniest leaves at my feet. It is like looking at the music that I hear in my dreams but can never quite remember, rich and wild and overflowing with life. It is a beautiful season indeed.

Tipping point – the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place ~Merriam-Webster

For the past few weeks, spring bulbs have been blooming at my feet, adding shots of welcome color to a skeletal world of bare branches and empty earth. Each day brought something new into flower.

Daffodil ‘Bella Coola’ and tulip ‘Shirley’

Tulip ‘Orange Princess’

Daffodil ‘La Traviata’

Daffodil ‘Hawera’

Spring bulbs in the grape and lemonade bed

Daffodil ‘Clavichord’

Daffodil ‘Thalia’

The past few days, after warm and rainy weather, the world looks if an artist had spilled an entire palette of colors into the landscape. The skeletons of bark and branch are suddenly clothed in spring finery and the once bare earth is filled with plants rising up to meet the new canopy overhead.

The kousa dogwood reveals its delicate young leaves against the woods around it.

Vibrant new oak leaves are festooned with tassels of Victorian flowers whose pollen sifts to the ground, layering everything with a fine gold dust.

The shrubs are fully flushed out with lush green foliage and some, like this Viburnum plicatum ‘Summer Snowflake’ are beginning to flower.

A lady bug emerges into the cool morning air from the rough leaf of a Chinese viburnum, where she sheltered during the night.

Each morning when I step outside, my eyes are dazzled by the richness of the garden,

the light sifting through leaf

and flower.

Scenes that were flat and dull are now filled with shadow and light,

shape and color.

I am too restless to stay indoors; I trace my path through the garden again and again to greet each new face, marvel at each new sign of life.

As the light fades in the evening, I stand on the deck for one last drink of color.

Early spring has tipped deliriously into May and each new day promises more change, more surprise, more beauty. Wherever you find yourself, may your days be spent in the beauty of nature awakening.

Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves; now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes its gay attire. ~Virgil

“fits and starts” – with irregular movement; with much stopping and starting” ~ The Free Dictionary

Spring is dancing with one step forward and two steps back, a tango of fits and starts. T-shirt and sandals one week, winter coat and boots the next. The week before our spring break from school, the days were mild and I hoped to spend the break in the garden.

It is the first mild day of March:
Each minute sweeter than before…
There is a blessing in the air,
Which seems a sense of joy to yield
To the bare trees, and mountains bare, ~William Wordsworth

Iris reticulata ‘Harmony’

Purple foliage of Hellebore ‘Onyx Odyssey’

Snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis)

Crocus tommasinianus

Hellebore ‘Onyx Odyssey’

Alas, my week in the garden was short circuited by cold rainy days and a few snowstorms, yet the flowers bloomed on.

Helleborus orientalis

Hellebores in the snow

Once school restarted, the weather warmed up again but only on the week days! Soon another winter storm came roaring through and left 6” of snow over the garden, captured in the video below.

While I was dismayed by the weather, Angel and our guest poodle Charlie Brown had a grand time playing in the snow, making me laugh at their antics.

The snow has not yet left the earth, but spring is already asking to enter your heart. ~Chekhov

On this last day of March, the sun is shining and the air is warming; it is a good day to work in the garden. The snow has finally melted away into the ground, fixing nitrogen into the soil and promising a wonderful garden season to come. Each day, something new blooms or shows promise of growth. The Cornus mas (Cornelian cherry) is a mass of tiny yellow blossoms and small yellow daffodils are coming into flower.

Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas)

Cornelian cherry blossoms

Miniature daffodil

Clematis bud

Rose branches budding

As we move into April, I look forward to seeing the garden come alive. Wherever you are, I hope you treasure and enjoy the beginning of spring as the earth comes to life.

In March, winter is holding back and spring is pulling forward. Something holds and something pulls inside of us too. ~Jean Hersey

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless . . . ~Natalie Babbitt

It is a cool quiet morning as Angel and I go out into the garden. Last night’s raucous frog chorus has faded with the light and the cicadas won’t begin their drowsy drone until the air warms. It feels as if time has stopped, with only the occasional bird song to remind me that I am awake in this beautiful world, the essence of late summer.

The garden has suddenly become voluptuous with the buxom blooms of Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’ and tall summer phlox (Phlox paniculata).

Hydrangea ‘Limelight’

‘Limelight’ blossoms

View from the upper deck

August creates as she slumbers, replete and satisfied. ~Joseph Wood Crutch

The composite flowers of Echinacea, Rudbeckia, and shasta daisies (Leucanthemum x superbum) are running riot through the garden.

I resist the urge to pluck their petals to the chant of “he loves me, he loves me not” and instead admire their cheerful faces so beloved by bees and butterflies.

Annual Rudbeckia‘Cherry Brandy’

Shasta daisy ‘Becky’

Echinacea ‘Rainbow Marcella’

Echinacea ‘Tiki Torch’

Shasta daisies, Agastache, and zinnias

I saw a monarch butterfly the other day, the first I’ve seen in two years, although it proved to be camera shy. Winged pollinators of all sorts have been busy in the garden.

Carpenter bee

Eastern tiger swallowtail

Bumble bee on Mondarda ‘Raspberry Wine’

Bumble bee on Echinacea

A few weeks ago, I spied this huge creature on a daylily stem, with a wing span larger than my hand, the Polyphemus moth (Antheraea polyphemus). A denizen of deciduous forests, it only lives a few days as an adult, just long enough to lay eggs and complete its life cycle. When I shared the photo with my friend Edwin, he exclaimed “In 4-H etymology projects this was the grand prize!”

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days – three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain. ~Keats

While creatures were flying, trees were falling. A high wind twisted and ripped a tall red oak tree from the base of its trunk in our front woods, splaying it across the road. A friendly neighbor driving by helped us cut the top branches and clear the road until the tree company could remove the rest. Fortunately, only a few fence rails were damaged.

A few days later, I heard a terrible cracking sound through my window at 4 A.M., followed by a series of snaps. I’ve heard a tree fall before and I braced myself for the crash into our house but fortunately, I heard only a solid thud in the distance. At first light, I found our neighbor’s huge oak had cracked near the base and fallen into the woods, taking two smaller oaks with it. I’m hoping the mulberry tree won’t suffer permanent damage, as it now has an oak leaning into it until the tree surgeons do their work later this week.

Last night, I walked through the garden at dusk to the sound of evening birdsong and the thrum of tree frogs courting. The hilltop that looked so cheerful in daylight

became dreamy and mysterious in the evening light.

There is nothing I like better at the end of a hot summer’s day than taking a short walk around the garden. You can smell the heat coming up from the earth to meet the cooler night air. ~Peter Mayle

May you enjoy every moment of the very top of summer before the Ferris wheel resumes its downward plunge into fall.

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